


So tell me when you hear my heart stop

by oftirnanog



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Coda to 3B, Even Though It's Not Over Yet, Gen, The Saddest Thing I've Ever Written, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 13:14:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1348729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oftirnanog/pseuds/oftirnanog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This takes place after Allison's funeral. Basically just Scott, Stiles, and Lydia hanging on to each for dear life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So tell me when you hear my heart stop

**Author's Note:**

> I have this terrible feeling we're not going to get a scene like this, and, well, I needed a scene where Scott, Stiles, and Lydia got to just be with each other for a bit with all the emotional fall out. Sorry it's so sad.
> 
> Originally tumblr fic, but then I decided to give it a home here.
> 
> Title from Lykke Li's "Possibility"

Scott doesn’t know where everyone’s gone. He’s standing in the middle of Lydia’s living room with an empty paper plate and his mom and the sheriff are standing by a table of food talking to Lydia’s mother. She’d offered to host the—not wake. Reception? Whatever this is, because Chris’ apartment wasn’t big enough. All of these people milling around after the funeral, eating food, and talking and generally trying not to fall apart. Or at least that’s how it feels to Scott. He never really understood the point of these things, remembers hiding in the back of Stiles’ closet with him after Claudia’s funeral, eating their way through a tray of cookies until Stiles had made himself sick on them.

Now though, he thinks he might get it. The need to have people around. To not be left alone with only a sharply aching sadness in your bones. He’s terrified for the moment he has to be alone again. Terrified that the yawning sorrow will consume him, given the chance. And he doesn’t know where everyone’s gone, by which he means Stiles and Lydia, because Derek’s there standing with Chris, and Isaac’s sitting on the couch with Kira, the twins are lingering around even though Scott really wishes they wouldn’t. Even Danny’s there, still wearing that expression he’s had since the wake, like he can’t really fathom that any of this is real.

But Stiles and Lydia aren’t there and that’s the pressing point. He glances around the room once more just to be sure, then pokes his head into the kitchen on his way upstairs. A couple crashing and banging noises come from Lydia’s room and Scott rushes inside. Lydia’s dresser drawers are all pulled open and there are clothes strewn everywhere—on her bed, over the floor, spilling out of the open drawers. A bottle of liquid foundation is knocked over and leaving a pool on her vanity. Something that looks like it might have been blush is shattered on the floor, leaving powdery pink smears on the hard wood floor.

Lydia is sitting on her bed rummaging through a box of jewelry, most of its contents lying in a tangled mess amidst the rumpled clothes on her bed sheets.

“There you are,” Scott says, and he hates that it’s the only thing he can come up with. But he’s not going to ask if she’s okay, because the answer is clearly ‘no’ and there’s not really anything else he can say. There’s not really anything else any of them can say.

Lydia jerks her head up and looks at him, her eyes wild with something akin to panic and for a moment Scott has a blissful sense of normalcy, wants to ask what’s wrong and kick into high gear to save the day and track down whatever supernatural disaster is causing that look on her face. But of course he knows what’s wrong, and it’s not something he can fix. And it’s a mark of just how terrible everything is that a spike of terror over a potential supernatural threat provides him with a moment of relief.

“I can’t find it,” Lydia says. She presses her lips together and it’s an expression that’s so familiar that Scott thinks it doesn’t really belong here in this utterly foreign day. “I had it yesterday. I’m sure of it, and now I can’t find it. I’ve looked everywhere. In all of the drawers, in my jackets, in all my bags, and I can’t find it.”

“What are you looking for?” Scott asks, shifting some things on the bed so he has a spot to sit down.

“My necklace,” she says. Her voice breaks at the end of it. “The one that Allison gave me at the beginning of term, I can’t—” She brings shaking hands up to her mouth and shakes her head.

“We’ll find it,” Scott says. He rubs a hand over her back, and looks her in the eyes. “We’ll find it, okay? What does it look like?”

“It’s just a little…” Lydia swallows and gestures helplessly at her neck where the necklace would sit. “A little arrow,” she manages.

Scott feels the air knocked out his lungs for a moment, but he forces himself to nod and focuses on the task at hand. It’s a welcome distraction. Something he can actually accomplish, a realistic goal. It’s so small and insignificant, but it suddenly seems like the most important thing in the world.

He doesn’t have to look for very long. It’s on the floor behind the vanity. Probably got knocked down in Lydia’s fervor to find it, in her terror at having possibly lost it. He picks it up carefully, let’s the little arrow rest in the palm of his hand while the thin silver chain hangs between his fingers. The arrow follows the line of the chain so that it will sit horizontal on Lydia’s chest. Scott swallows and closes his fingers over it so he doesn’t have to look at it anymore. He takes a deep breath and swallows the lump in his throat, blinks away the tears that are fogging up his vision.

“I found it,” he says, and stretches his hand out for Lydia to take. He tilts his hand and it slithers into her open palm.

Lydia stares at it and she’s biting the inside of her cheek against the quiver in her bottom lip. She takes a gasping breath and looks at Scott. “How do people do this?” she asks. Tears are tracking down her face now, leaving smudged gray lines from her eyeliner.

Scott shakes his head. He doesn’t know what to do. _He doesn’t know what to do._ All he knows is that he aches, that he’s exhausted with grief, that he wishes he had answers, but he doesn’t. He hates that the only thing that would make this better is the impossible thing. Hates even more that they’ve grown used to doing impossible things, to beating impossible odds at every turn only to end up here.

“I can’t,” Lydia gasps. “I can’t breathe. I don’t know.” She’s sobbing now and all Scott can do is sit next to her and wrap his arm around her and it’s not nearly enough. Not even close. “I don’t know how people do this,” she says. Scott presses his lips against the top her head, burying his nose in her hair and breathing, because whatever else is going on, Lydia still smells like Lydia (still smells a bit like Allison) and there’s comfort in that.

“They do it because they have to,” says a voice from the door.

Stiles glances at them before his eyes flicker down to his hands where he’s picking at a hangnail. He still looks haggard. The dark circles under his eyes are just as prominent as they were when the nogitsune had him and if anything his skin is even paler. But he’s definitely Stiles. Right now that’s really all Scott can ask for.

“Where’d you go?” Scott asks. And it seems silly. His obsession with everyone’s location today. But then maybe it isn’t. It’s something he can keep track of, something he has minute control over.

Stiles just shrugs.

“He was in the bathroom,” Lydia says. Her voice is wreaked, but she’s not crying anymore.

Scott catches Stiles’ eye and won’t let him go. “Too many cookies,” Stiles says eventually, and Scott’s never wanted so badly to be able to leech away this kind of pain too.

“Come here,” Lydia says, reaching out towards Stiles.

He looks unsure for about a split second, and then makes his way towards them. Lydia sweeps her arm over the bed beside her, shoving clothes and bags and jewelry out of the way, not even flinching when most of it hits the floor. Stiles lies down beside her with his head in her lap and she buries her fingers in his hair. He lets one hand rest on Scott’s knee, an assuring point of contact.

“We should go back down,” Stiles says after several long moments.

Lydia takes a shaking breath. “Yeah,” she concedes.

Scott swallows. Doesn’t say anything. He wishes they could stay here. Lydia’s bedroom feels safe somehow. Having the two of them close by makes all of this—not easier, but marginally less terrible, and he’s not sure he can handle other people right now. But Stiles is right. They need to go back down. Because this isn’t about them. Isn’t even about Allison. Not really. It’s about showing that the world keeps spinning even in the wake of personal catastrophe

“Will you put this on for me?” Lydia asks, standing and lifting her hair so that Scott can fasten her necklace.

His fingers feel clumsy on the delicate clasp, but he gets it eventually. “There,” he says.

Lydia turns and looks at them, wipes her thumbs under eyes to remove the smears and then brushes her finger over the tiny silver arrow sitting at the base of her throat.

“Ready?” she asks.

“No,” Scott says.

Lydia’s mouth twitches with something that’s probably trying to be a smile and she reaches out both her hands. He and Stiles each take one and let her tug them off the bed. Lydia doesn’t let go of Scott’s hand the whole way downstairs, barely lets go the entire rest of the afternoon, and Stiles keeps his hand at the juncture of Scott’s neck and shoulder, his thumb brushing compulsively against the bumps of his spine, remembers when Stiles’ much smaller hand, clammy with sweat, wouldn’t let go of his for what felt like days. And Scott thinks that maybe this is how people do this, by tethering themselves together to prevent each other from sinking.


End file.
